Russian keyboard layouts

If you are looking for a Russian keyboard, and you don’t have an actual one, e.g. you are outside of Russia, here’s a solution to your problem: virtual keyboard!

You can choose among 4 standard keyboard layouts (йцукен, йцукен typewriter, alphabet order, or even Ukrainian) or 12 phonetic keyboard layouts, which makes this page a total “must to have”!
Why 12?
Because many Cyrillic-Latin user have their favorite layout, they can decide for example what’s the Russian letter under the Latin “W” – my favorite, as it’s the closest to the Bulgarian, is “яВерты2”.

Now, here’s even better part: the same page you can get in… English.
It sounds strange – why would you need it in English, if you are speaking Russian, you’d ask?
Well, because you may be asked for example to fill-in a document with Russian letters, but your knowledge of Russian is limited to knowing only the alphabet.

Enjoy, and say thanks to Pavel Gorodyanski, who created this useful page! Also, check out Pavel’s description how to install Russian keyboard under Windows here.

Because I know – having my site since 1996 and thus a lot of e-mail from different people that there are many non-native speakers who would be more comfortable with English interface, for example:

– numerous students of Slavic departments of US universities
(and often teachers, too – they do know Russian welll enough but it’s easier for them to figure out what that Virtual Keyboard offer if they read it in English

– linguists and even translators (see AATSEEL.org ) who know Russian but are not very familiar with Russian tools _on computer_ (say a word ‘layout’ in _Cyrillic_ says nothing to them) – English UI would be better for them

– and as you correctly pointed out there are people with very limited Cyrillic knowledge who – unlike students – don’t have to improve that –
say I had letters from US guys who studied Russian in college years ago, still remember some AND want to comminucate with some Russian women 🙂

For example, in almost _any_ Cyrillic text people have Latin/English words such as “Windows” or email address or Web address or even a phrase that has “Control Panel”, “Regional Options”, etc.

On the keyboard of the article it’s no problem to type such mixed text – a user can switch between languages by using Esc button.

On the keyboard you suggest it’s AUFUL – it’s _impossible_ to do.

This makes it _practically_ (in real life) useless…

2) Less handy for Cyrillic in functionality

The keyboard you suggest has only one – Standard layout. While (see article) _millions_ of people around the world do NOT know that layout – they use auful “transliteration” in forums and e-mail – like “schast’e” and explain it this way:
“I can not use Standard Russian layout, it takes me 10 minutes to write a message, I need to search for each letter too long”.

While the keyboard discussed in article has 12 Phonetic layouts and both Standard layouts.

**********************

Thus the keyboard in article is BETTER than one you suggest – in general functionality and especially for Cyrillic…

🙂

Not because the programmer is better but because the programmer did the discussions of needed functionality in many forums in Russian and outside of Russia (from US to Germany) to find out what end user really needs –

a switch to type a word “Windows” or an e-mail address is the simplest example – a Virtual Keyboard is USELESS without such functionality.

The people who developed the keyboard you wrote about did NOT do “end user research”, it’s obvious, so their keyboard is WORSE in real life…